NASA has announced the crew for the Artemis 3 lunar mission: what we know
10 June 12:14
The U.S. space agency NASA has announced the names of the four astronauts who will make up the crew of the Artemis 3 lunar mission. Americans Andre Douglas, Frank Rubio, and Randy Bresnik, as well as Italian Luca Parmitano, will travel to the Moon. The announcement was made at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, reports "Komersant Ukrainian" citing DW.
It was planned that a German astronaut would take the Italian’s place
Earlier, the European Space Agency (ESA) stated that a German astronaut would be the first European on NASA’s lunar mission. Among the main candidates for this role were: 49-year-old scientist, geophysicist, volcanologist, and astronaut Alexander Gerst, and 56-year-old astronaut and engineer Matthias Maurer, a member of the SpaceX Crew-3 mission.
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ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher noted in a comment that NASA’s requirements were the deciding factor in choosing Parmitano.
“They were specifically looking for a test pilot, and we have only one test pilot in our astronaut corps—Luca Parmitano,” he said.
Artemis-3 astronauts will not land on the Moon
Initially, the Artemis 3 mission was planned to include a lunar landing, but in February 2026, NASA announced that the astronauts would remain in low Earth orbit and practice docking with lunar landers from SpaceX and Blue Origin.
The launch of the Artemis 3 mission is scheduled for 2027, while the crewed lunar landing has been postponed until 2028.
Artemis-2 Lunar Mission
On the night of April 11, NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Cook, as well as Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, returned to Earth. Their spacecraft, Orion, flew around the Moon as part of the Artemis-2 mission. During the mission, a new record was set for the farthest distance a human has ever traveled from Earth—the astronauts were 407,000 km away from our planet.
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